Cancer 77

I have a new variation on the old Boomtown Rats song. My version is: “Tell me why I don’t like Thursdays.” Not very original, I will admit, but appropriate to the last 4 months of my life, and presumably/hopefully the next two months.

I noticed today that I keep speaking of tomorrow, meaning what is happening on Friday. As it is now Wednesday I think I might be unconsciously removing Thursday from my life. I have two reasons for this. My Thursday variations are that tomorrow I will have my chemo manbag removed (the nurses call it a manbag, I am sure there are better names for a bag full of chemo chems attached to the tube that goes into my arm, up around my shoulder and through to just above my heart, so the chemicals can get to do their stuff quickly), but I never know what time. It is on a 46-hour programme (if that is the word for a slowly shrinking bubble pushing the chems into my body one drop at a time). Usually, it means the nurse comes around 2-4pm, and I am always frightened they won’t turn up so the damn bottle stays attached for longer than two days, perhaps forever.

That happens every other Thursday. On alternate Thursdays the nurse comes around and takes blood samples. That has to be in the morning so they can be processed quickly so the consultant can look at the results the following day and see whether I am fit enough to undergo the next round of chemo, starting the following Tuesday. On these Thursdays I am frightened that they are not going to turn up on time. Thursdays are frightening days – though the nurses have turned up every time so far.

By the way, I like the nurses. They are friendly and know what they are doing. When I say I don’t like Thursdays it is not because of the people involved.

The routine overall is becoming more tedious. The two week cycle consists of First Tuesday, in the hospital for hours having several chemo drugs pumped into me while I sit on an uncomfortable chair bantering with the nurses. It is largely politically incorrect, unwoke, or whatever term is appropriate. I like nurses. There is a lot about death and various abuses of the system. There are few jokes as such, but it is good fun. Yesterday I came up with a Stephen King version of Solzhenitsyn’s Cancer Ward. An improvement I think, certainly if I write it it will be a lot shorter than the standard books by Solzhenitsyn and Stephen King. It probably won’t be as good either. OK, I will give away the secret. Eight patients are in the ward, and there are about three nurses. Over the period of a day one or more of the nurses kills of the patients one by one, in various ways nurses are expert at (I particularly like the snipping of the spinal cord with scissors. The surviving patients don’t realise people are dying at first, and when they do realise they become trapped in the ward. OK, I haven’t worked out all the details yet but either all the patients will die or, perhaps better, one patient survives and kills off the murdering nurse(s). I need to do a bit of research into the best ways nurses can kill patients, so I will ask them next time I am in. When discussing the story there was a bit of an undercurrent regarding Lucy Letby as it is recent, but hey, we’re all going to die. I don’t think it upset anyone but who knows? The name of the killer nurse? I think her surname will be Ratchett, or something like that. I have a first name but she might read the blog, though I did tell her.

And this is what I do on the first Tuesday of the cycle. I then have the bottle attached until the first Thursday, so Wednesday is a bit of a letdown. Once the bottle is off I am free for six days. This is when we have been going away, though not in September, unless you count going to Oliver Cromwell’s house in Huntingdon (one of the two English greatest men, you can guess the other one on the basis that Cromwell is one). Then it is the second Thursday. The following day I see the consultant or the cancer nurse regarding whether I can continue my treatment. So far my results have been as good as can be expected, including last week’s scan. The bastards won’t go away and never will but there is some shrinkage.

Then I am free over the weekend and back to first Tuesday. I have now nearly completed 8 cycles out of 12. I then hope to take a break. They will remove the PICC line from my suffering veins and I will be free for a couple of months. We hope to get to the south of France for Xmas. I hate Xmas. We are looking at a nice house in Certe, close to the Spanish border, close to the escape route for LLuis Companys, President of Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War.